


A Turn of the Wheel

by Vee



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Angst and Feels, Internal Conflict, M/M, Manpain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 12:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8248247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: Right now, it's perfect.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this one before 3.08 aired. As such, I had to put it on hold because I wasn’t sure I even wanted to post it, but here ya go anyway. It still works, it’s just probably infinitely sadder because of events that followed. Yikes. Thanks, Joe MacManpain.

There's lot of hate in him, a lot of tolerances built up over years. Unexpected things, on a scope he did not anticipate. Days aren't things to worry about, individual hours that happen between now and what's next. But they keep happening, dragging, compounding, and he hates it.    
  
He hates parties and board meetings and a schedule decided weeks ahead of time. He hates it so much that the first time he sees it hacked and altered, his first reaction is anger only because he doesn't know what else to think. When it fades into the thrill of something improved and new, defiant and exciting, the man behind it has already left his office. Given the option, given anything other than the implied command to leave, no doubt he would have stayed.    
  
And Joe knows he has to have him back. He knows he has to Have him, and be near the axis that made him feel dizzy and found again, for just an instant.    
  
Ryan has a talented mouth, it turns out, but not everyone appreciates it; every word has a purpose even if he's not a poet or an academic. He is plain, and eager, and beautiful, and doesn't require a plan and a guidebook to operate. Instinct pushes his ideas out in fragments and slugs at times, and Joe listens and wishes that he could just hit the bullseye of a conceit so well, not burying it in layers of trappings for the consumption of everyone else who can't even understand, because they don't have the instinct to even try.   
  
That's their shared consciousness, their in-between space like a sixth sense they don't need to articulate or define to know how volatile a bond it is. The lens focuses tight on the future, and they can't afford to shift even slightly. The barest adjustment (a lingering touch acknowledged for what it wants to be, a conversation given too much breathing room away from tasks and tables) and it could burn them both, engulf it all in fire.    
  
So the first time Ryan melts between Joe's legs, drunk on accomplishment and victory, he's sharing everything. He's not saying a word but he's sharing the credit and the control of what they've done just as obviously as he's sharing the initially coy question in his eyes. All the casual touches and the less-than-casual ones have been received and recorded, compiled and resolved to this   
  
(there was the morning not long ago when Ryan slept over on the couch as he tended to do, and as Joe heard him moving with slow, quiet footsteps around the apartment, he slipped a hand beneath the sun-soaked blankets, beneath the otherwise-empty sheets to satisfy a wayward morning whim. The bedroom door tilted with its inviting open angle toward the hall, and by the time Joe came with the covers nudged aside and his pants around his ankles, he still hadn't heard the front door close - though he'd certainly heard the footsteps cease. He couldn't be sure that Ryan had seen him, not then, though he carried the suspicion and maybe the hope that his sly exhibition had been appreciated)   
  
inevitability. Seeking approval at first, Ryan's  eyes scan instead for reprimand. Finding none, his hand slides in along the thigh spread wide in front of him, pausing, pensive as it makes contact with a growing consideration. Joe's eyes slide shut.    
  
Something is reverent about the way Ryan touches him, even through the fabric, the slow and deliberate touch of someone learning him, mapping him. There is nothing abstract here, nothing arcane that can't be extracted and qualified for future use, future improvements. It would seem languid and trifling from the outside looking on, the way Ryan kneels there touching him just so, just here and just there, no urgency and no rhythm to it. But Joe can feel the reasoning in each fingertip, tensing him further away from a facade, coiling him tighter into a different thing altogether.    
  
There is the wild unmapped riddle of how to coax and open him up, parting whatever may acquiesce in Joe MacMillan to reveal the far less complicated puzzle of bringing him to a climax beyond simple satisfaction. There are the physical layers of it, the emotional ones, and the deeper more untested ones, but Ryan can keep up with all the branches and conditions, and even as Joe tests him - (bless him and keep him) - he is stubborn and sure, determined to maintain the pace that suits him.    
  
"Keep doing that," Joe says, thinking the lead is his place, directions are his to give as they've always been. He feels crass to say it. It doesn't fit the muddled almost-sunset light through the windows nor the almost-gasp whipping the edges of his words. It doesn't fit with the almost-elegant way Ryan's finger curves a touch around the head of his cock where it stretches the fine knit of his trousers.    
  
"I was planning on it," comes the immediate counter. "Are you in a hurry, here?"   
  
Eyes still closed, Joe laughs, and lets his head tilt against the back of the couch. All at once his shoulders are relaxing, his lungs open up, and an exuberant luxury sets his mind at ease. "No, of course not."    
  
He wants to say _but you're driving me crazy_ and knows already how transparent the tone would be; he predicts being taken to task for months and weeks of a treacherous tease that didn't necessarily have to follow this path. He is only being paid in kind, and no doubt in his mind the dividends will be worth the investment.    
  
The task then, temporary and tremulous as he knows it is, is to forget about the course, the focus, the future where he might finally be able to stop. The world he wants is still so far away, hidden over the horizon and exciting for all the things it hasn't been stripped of yet, another life he can slip into at will, a place he can leave just as easily, reset at will, and in the very act of doing so he will be Connecting.    
  
Still, despite all concentrations he is present, and his hips twist with a squirm, listing toward Ryan's palm.    
  
They don't talk about whethers and whens, though the questions might tingle on the tip of Joe's tongue, grazing bared bottom teeth. Anything he doesn't know yet, he certainly doesn't want to know now. Anything Ryan has done or may know, any lives he's lived, passions he's suffered or commanded - it can perfectly begin and end with him, with their in-between unspoken secrets, with now.    
  
Right now, it's perfect.    
  
Reality and the present may collide soon enough, pull the unfamiliar contortion of a smile right off his face, recalling too much and remembering to shut down, to close off and run, to hope Ryan will still hold on even then. The sweet succor of liquor will prove inadequate for both of them soon enough, but at least it's not like ambition, providence, everything else that gets pulled apart and takes over him, forgotten until all that remains is his fault in the matter.   
  
And if he remembers it all at once with fingers carding through Ryan's hair as that talented mouth opens on him, that's acceptable, that's expected. Just another monument he'll build to the finite nature of human connections, another to smash to dust and let scatter, but that's okay. If his fingers start pushing suddenly, too many past lives in the too-familiar, tragic "No" he drops heavily on the moment, and it may, and he may, it's all right.    
  
It's all between now and what's next. Another thing he didn't anticipate, another day and another simple mistake.    
  



End file.
